


No Time Like The Present

by murderofonerose (atmilliways)



Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Merry Dethmas, Post-Doomstar Requiem
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-28 03:04:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17174642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atmilliways/pseuds/murderofonerose
Summary: They say you should write the fluff you want to read, so here's a day after Christmas story.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “My lord, are you sure we couldn’t just, um, clip some mistletoe from the tree and just hang that?” “Christmas isn’t the time to halfass shit, _Christmas is the time to shine.”_


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is set post-Doomstar, years after the comic in chapter 1.

Celebrating Christmas as multi-billionaires was different than it was for regular jackoffs. What good was a day of free presents when you could buy literally anything in the world you might want any day of the year? But it wasn’t Christmas Day itself that was the worst. For some reason, it was the day after that was always the huge letdown. When any day could be Christmas there was never any “day after” spent in pure enjoyment of all new stuff, because life was a constant parade of new stuff and it had become ordinary. Nathan wouldn’t have been able to put it into words if his life depended on it, but the black hole in his soul every December 26th was nostalgia for the innocent days when he’d still been able to feel proper gratitude, and it got worse every year. 

It was, by far, the bleakest and blackest of Wednesdays. 

The past year had been a hard one. First Toki had been kidnapped, then one thing had lead to another and they’d all been forced to acknowledge that they were some sort of gods or superheroes or something. Not wholesome ones, though — honestly, pretty shitty ones. If that’s what they were, it wouldn’t have taken them so long to go find their missing bandmate. So yeah, they’d done that and then set up a charity thing for musicians who weren’t as rich and famous as they were, but so what? They, and Nathan in particular, had lost something really important along the way and the holiday season only threw that loss into sharp relief. 

“My lord?” The voice was a hesitant one, as all the Klokateers were loathe to interrupt any of their masters during a good, dark sulk. Nathan stopped his aimless pacing around the great hall with a growler of yesterday’s spiked nog, turning to stare blankly at the newcomer. “Your presence has been respectfully requested in the conference room.”

He grunted, took a swig of rum-brandy-bourbon-cognac-eggnog, and waved the servant away, but laboriously changed the direction of his heavy steps. There was nothing much to do besides try to avoid the recording studio, just like every other day, so he might as well see what was happening elsewhere in the Haus. 

It was curiously quiet as he neared the conference room. Usually, when the band had been summoned there, one could hear a chorus of idle swearing, un-amplified guitar riffs, and arguing upon approach. Nathan just shrugged it off, figuring he was the first to arrive, and pushed the door open. And indeed, none of the other members of Dethklok were present, but that was where expectation stopped syncing up with reality. 

They’d gone sparse with the decorations this Christmas. The new manager didn’t live on site and no one else had been able to muster enough interest to take charge. Not even Toki, probably because he’d spent last Christmas chained up in a basement, and the one before that had been robbed of presents and then pinned under a very heavy cross alongside Stella Murderface for a few hours. So a few glossy black Christmas pentagrams adorned the wall here and there, with a bare minimum of evergreen garland made from local Mordland trees, but that was it. 

“What the...?”

Or it had been, anyway. 

The conference room table glittered with tasteful red taper candles, set amidst a massive sprawling centerpiece of holly branches. It had to have been imported, because there hadn’t been any holly on Mordland grounds since the year Murderface had tried to make “cranberry” sauce out of the berries and they’d all ended up puking their guts out. There were more decorations, but the next thing that Nathan noticed made everything else totally irrelevant as, at the far end of the table, Charles stood from what had been his usual chair. 

“... Fuck,” Nathan said eloquently. He hadn’t seen Charles since he’d tendered his resignation and walked away into the snow. Seeing him now, not in the familiar suit and tie but a charcoal robe and cloak lined with red fur, made the frontman feel oddly rooted to the floor. 

Charles gave a small, awkward smile. “I’m, ah, sorry I didn’t get here in time for Christmas. It’s far too easy to loose track of time at the Church.”

Sodden brain cells finally caught up with Nathan’s eyes and he realized he was staring, so he looked down and shuffled his feet instead. There had been a lot left unsaid after everything that had happened last year. A lot. He wasn’t sure how to pick up all those dropped threads now — about Cornickelson’s funeral, about rescuing Toki at the cost of the previous High Holy Priest, and especially about Abigail, who Nathan also hadn't seen in pretty much a year. 

“Uhhhhh,” he said stupidly, belatedly remembering that Charles had just said something. “Yeah, uh, must be hard... inside the ocean like that.” He put his half empty jug of nog down on the table and rubbed the back of his head. “Um... so... when are the rest of the guys getting here for the meeting?”

“I, ah.” Charles cleared his throat. “Ah, Nathan, can you look up, please?”

Nathan peeked through the protective curtain of black hair that had fallen across his face, and realized that Charles was literally pointing for him to look at the ceiling. He tilted his head up and saw that an entire tree had been hoisted up to the rafters. The branches were as bare as the excavated roots, except for one bushy tuft of green that the other man was standing precisely beneath.

“This isn’t exactly a meeting,” Charles explained quietly, which for Charles translated into something like sheepishness on a regular person. “I just wanted to meet with you, ah, privately, first. Before seeing the rest of the guys.”

“Is that... mistletoe?” Nathan asked slowly, still staring up. He only recognized it from that one time he’d... done... the same thing... years ago, to feel Charles out and if it wasn’t going well just pretend... _Oh_. 

Suddenly, Nathan’s palms were sweating and he had to wipe them on his jeans, not achieving any level of discretion. Fuck, was he supposed to do something? Was the guy just going to stand there and _wait_? It already felt as though a hundred hours had passed, exactly one hundred, even though it was probably only a few seconds, and he’d always figured he would need to apologize first and still didn’t have anything lined up to say, not even close. 

So half of his stupid brain was yammering for him to go over there and kiss Charles already because it had been too fucking long since the last time that’d happened, and the other half was yelling that no, he couldn’t, he hadn’t _earned_  it. And he felt blank, and frozen, and at the same time as though he was vibrating at such a high frequency that even _dogs_ couldn’t hear it and he didn't know what to do. 

He’d been wrong before.  _Now_ it was, by far, the bleakest and blackest of Wednesdays. 

Then he was lunging to get to that end of the table, driving Charles against the far wall, kissing him hard enough to bruise them both. It was exactly as good as he remembered it. The way Charles yielded to him not because he had to, the goddamn ninja, but because he chose to, because he wanted it. They’d had their misunderstandings, their fair share of abandonment on both sides at one time or another, but at least that much was still true. 

When they came up for air, Nathan found the medallion around Charles’ neck and closed a fist around it. He vaguely remembered grabbing it after rescuing Toki, during their hasty exit before the building came down, but he couldn't recall the part where it had left his possession. “So, uh,” he mumbled, since he figured he should probably say something, “are you, like, really a priest now? Am I gonna go to hell or something for this?”

“Ah, no, not at all,” Charles replied, just as breathlessly. He had both hands fisted in Nathan’s t-shirt and wasn’t letting go, which, for someone like Charles, spoke volumes. “You — the five of you — are the, uh, gods in this case, essentially. You can do anything you’d like with impunity.”

“Okay... cool.” Nathan wasn’t sure what impunity meant, but as far as he was concerned there was no time to find out like the present. Because the one thing he did know was that, after all these years, it was finally starting to feel like Christmas. 


End file.
